JUJITSUI-GENERIS MERCHANDISE

November 19, 2004

Dead Souls are Dangerous

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. ~ George William Curtis

While there are still Americans who make the connection between love of country and the principles that let freedom ring, their numbers are dwindling. The US has become increasingly dichotomized—on one end, a cluster of jingoists; on the other, a cluster of the intellectual anointed. For the former group, patriotism has something to do with Lee Greenwood, the Bible and NASCAR. For the latter, patriotism is passé. And while there are many for whom a pro-America argument is “God Bless America” played on a continuous loop, the most dangerous group is the herd of intellectuals headed toward what Samuel P. Huntington calls “denationalization.” ...

According to Huntington, to be educated in America today is to be a cosmopolitan: enamored with the vagaries of “global justice,” detached from institutions that confer their freedoms, and apathetic towards citizenship. He writes:

Coming back to America from a foreign strand, they are not likely to be overwhelmed with deep feelings of commitment to their “native land.” Their attitudes and behavior contrast with the overwhelming patriotism and nationalistic identification of the rest of the American public. A major gap is growing in America between the dead and or dying souls among its elites and its “Thank God for America” public.

These are the “dead souls” of Huntington’s book Who Are We: the Challenges to America’s National Identity, whose description is summed up in a nice parallel essay by Huntington titled “Dead Souls: Denationalization of the American Elite.” And while Huntington’s writings on this American schism seem to take a rather anthropological tack, there is a subtext there that could be fleshed out: dead souls are dangerous.

What makes a dead soul? Is it a longing to be a member of the elite? Is it the fashionable ideas of the salon? Is the residue of postmodern claptrap that brainwashes the educated classes? Is it NPR?

The answer: e. All of the above.

A number of factors contribute to this denationalization, according to Huntington. Among them are perhaps less cynical than the ones I just mentioned. For example, as globalization proceeds, transnational ideas take root among those for whom success or failure is no longer confined to the sphere of the nation, and peoples become increasingly interdependent. Huntington breaks up transnational ideas and people into three categories: universalist, economic and moralist.

• The universalist conceives of America as the “universal nation” not only due to the dissemination of American culture worldwide, but to its ability to bring widespread cultural diversity under its own auspices. Couple these factors with its status as superpower, and the US is regarded as less and less distinct from the rest of the world.

• The economic approach acknowledges the reality of breaking down of national boundaries due to dynamic market forces: “This view is prevalent among executives of multinational corporations, large NGOs, and comparable organizations operating on a global basis and among individuals with skills, usually of a highly technical nature, for which there is a global demand and who are thus able to pursue careers moving from country to country.”

• But the most inherently dangerous category of transnational ideation is the one that gives rise to greatest number of dead souls—the moralist. The moralist “decries patriotism and nationalism as evil forces and argues that international law, institutions, regimes and norms are morally superior to those of the individual nations. Commitment to humanity must supercede commitment to nation.” This is the prevailing view among the intelligentsia.

What’s wrong with the moralist’s idea? It doesn’t sounds so bad at the face of it? Huntington sites Amy Gutman who says “The ‘primary allegiance’ of Americans should not be to the United States or to some other politically sovereign community," but to ‘democratic humanism.’” But most dead souls aren’t anarchists, so they have to pledge their allegiances to something less vague. Sadly, the default flag is increasingly becoming that of the UN. “Moralist transnationals,” writes Huntington, “reject or are highly critical of the concept of national sovereignty. They agree with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that national sovereignty ought to give way to ‘individual sovereignty’ so that the international community can act to prevent or stop gross violations by governments of the rights of their citizens.”

At the height of Hellenic power, Plato claimed to be neither Athenian, nor Greek, but a citizen of the world. Maybe Plato’s ghost has returned to haunt the minds of the cosmopolitan elite? Then again, maybe aspirations to global law are not motivated by Platonism at all, but rather by a simple meme that can only be called snobbery. After all, no cosmopolitan wants to be counted among the mobile-home plebs of Patriotic America.

Whether the desire for denationalization is born of ideology or chauvinism, it will not take us to the peaceful, more equitable world they wish for. That is because the virtues of pluralism and toleration do not inhere in all cultures—very few in fact. Without such basic mores, we cannot hope for a world undivided by radical cultural differences, idiosyncratic interpretation of religious texts, ethnic hatreds, and the mysterious forces of group identification.

As long as there are those that consider you “enemy,” you will be forced to seek out your allegiances or die. That is to say, the ideal of One World is only possible when the virtue of toleration is universal. Until that day, there will be lines of demarcation—foreign or domestic, friend or foe, “us” and “them.” This is nothing more than the reality the world has handed us at this point in history. To think otherwise is to see blindly through a dangerous world into a Platonic utopia in which terrorist will be tamed by either a Gandhian spirit of goodwill or by an inefficient committee with a weak army and a weaker will.

Ordinary people in the Arab World have heard that Americans regard themselves as a people of freedom and toleration. And that may seem strange to folks who have had their neighbors invaded by the US military, or have heard that the average American regards the Middle East with suspicion. But until the peoples of the world adopt the sorts of virtues, principles, and institutions that make America work, we must look upon the rest of the world with a wary eye. And sometimes, we must fight.

America, somewhere between the “reds” and the “blues,” still possesses a spirit of toleration and pluralism at home. But unless a new life is breathed into that spirit, I fear America will collapse under the weight of its own self-doubt. The unfortunate paradox in all of this is that we cannot extend our spirit of toleration too far (and this may be the core of the moralist worldview characterized by Huntington). Toleration, like war, is tit-for-tat. That is to say, the foundations on which civilizations are built require reciprocity to exist: I acknowledge your right to live freely so long as you acknowledge mine. If one of us fails to hold up our end of the bargain, that person is enemy. Since toleration is nothing more than the psychological trappings of our mutual acknowledgement as free beings, to misapply toleration to those who would see our demise is simply to invite one’s own extinction.

Despite this fact, more and more of America’s souls are growing dead. Princeton’s Amy Gutmann argues that it is "repugnant" for American students to learn they are, "above all, citizens of the United States." Obviously, moralists like Gutmann don’t lack the virtue of toleration. But they lack something… If toleration helps establish trust among free people with different ideas of what is good, then there must be something else that binds them. So what is it that we’re losing?

The idea of citizenship. If toleration is an attitude we have towards others, citizenship is an attitude we have about ourselves. Citizenship means to cherish the blessings that come with our common faith in freedom, and to accept the responsibilities that come with it. The spirit of cooperation confers a deep human sense of belonging that, here at home, can transcend race, religion, and education. This thing we call patriotism means both an acknowledgement of the fruits of our mutual trust, and the institutions that help perpetuate it.

“I am an American citizen,” therefore, does not have to be the empty-headed notion of the bigot or brute, but one of the most important phrases one can say and mean. That’s because it refers to something vital about our condition. “I am a citizen of the world” has no meaning. Someday it might. But for now, we must accept our heritage; one borne of struggle, sacrifice and common bonds. And we must accept the existence of enemies. If we don’t, I fear we’ll all be citizens of the grave.